


Classic Winchester Adventures

by Winchester_of_the_lord



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (bad) humor, (not really sorry though), A lot of sass, Bickering brothers, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Crack Fic, Cursed Object, Dean Winchester Loves The Impala, Dean's exceptional (lack of) musical talent, Fun, Gen, Ghosts, Ghouls, I'm Sorry, Minor Injuries, Sleeping in the Impala (Supernatural), Swearing, Threats to Sam's hair, Witches, happy endings, pink impala
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2019-11-18 13:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18121826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester_of_the_lord/pseuds/Winchester_of_the_lord
Summary: Ever wondered what everyone's two most favorite brothers were up to when they weren't looking for their absent father and the world wasn't facing the next apocalypse?Wonder no more: they were driving in the Impala, sleeping in rundown motels and fighting the monster of the week while being sassy af and pranking each other.





	1. "Jerk!" "Bitch!"

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for the [@spnclassicbingo](https://spnclassicbingo.tumblr.com/) challenge on Tumblr. I hope you enjoy reading it, please tell me what you think, if you like it, feel free to leave Kudos :)  
> You can find me on [Tumblr](https://winchester-ofthe-lord.tumblr.com/) , come scream at me or just say hi, I'm always happy to meet new friends <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean work on a case that doesn’t quite wrap up as quickly as they’d originally planned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, I'm gonna re-write this whole chapter some time in the near future, bc I kinda don't like the narrative here ^^

“SAM! Watch out!”

The giant man ducks away just in time, as a severed head flies past his own, only mere inches separating Sam’s hair from the sharp blade of Dean’s machete. The detached head hits the cold stone floor with a disgusting, squishy thump, its appertaining body toppling over through the open door of the mausoleum, ungracefully tumbling down the stairs and eventually crumpling up on the lowest step like a...well, lifeless body.

“Dammit, Dean!” the younger Winchester swears as he stands up again, “As much as I appreciate you decapitating these friggin ghouls, I, on the other hand, would very much prefer keeping my head where it is.”

His older, and only slightly shorter brother chuckles when he waves his machete around, right in front of Sam’s face, “C’mon Sammy, how about a little haircut? Y’know, you would’ve seen me coming, if it weren’t for your ridiculously long, girly hair there.” He lowers his blade and looks around, grimacing at the two beheaded ghouls in front of him.

“Someday I’ll just cut it off and you’ll thank me for it,” Dean mutters the idle threat under his breath, but apparently moose ears are exceptionally good.

“Don’t you dare!” the moose cautions with a glare, raising the admonitory tip of his own machete towards Dean’s sassy grin.

“Whatever,” Dean placates and nods his head over to the corpses, “Let’s hide these sonsabitches and then head to the next motel, I could really use a hot shower, I smell like death.” He grabs the foot of one of the beheaded ghouls and starts dragging it up the stairs, into the open mausoleum.

In the meantime, Sam crosses the graveyard in long, nevertheless quick, strides.

It was a ‘family’ of three ghouls altogether, and the Winchesters had killed the first one on the other end of the extensive area, then chased after the two others who’d tried to hide inside their cozy little sepulchre they called ‘home’. They had used the whole cemetery as their private buffet, haphazardly digging up graves to feed from the corpses, so Sam plans to bury the monster in one of the already opened holes in the ground.

After he has safely dumped the second dead Ghoul in the stone room, Dean gets back to the spot where they’d fought earlier, trying to find the last missing head with the beam of his flashlight. He lets it roam over the various headstones until he finally spots the head, which had apparently rolled behind a carefully draped flower bouquet. “There you are,” he proclaims, holding up the head by its hair in a triumphant gesture, before he throws it into the musty, stale chamber tomb, alongside the rest of it.

Dean spends the next couple minutes gathering their machetes and a few other items that lay scattered across the not any more consecrated ground, and packs them into their duffel bag.

After what felt like half an eternity, Sam gets back to where Dean’s waiting for him. “Finally!” the older brother sighs, “What the hell took you so long?”

“Umm..couldn’t find the head. And then I had to...uh...bury the ghoul in the grave of their latest-” the taller man pauses to think for a brief moment, “ _snack._ It’s all done now. Let’s get out of here.”

They close the mausoleum and bolt the door, adding an extra chain with an unbreakable lock. “Let’s just hope that nobody ever opens this thing up again,” Dean says, hands Sam the duffel bag and heads back to the Impala.

When they reach the car, the younger brother pauses, eyeing it with a contented smile for a few seconds. His older brother rips the bag from his hand and stows it in the trunk, walks around his baby and throws Sam an impatient look, causing him to move again and to eventually get in the passenger seat.

The Impala pulls away and hits the road. A few minutes into the drive Dean starts thrumming his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of _Sympathy For The Devil_ blaring out of the speakers and he hums along to the song, actually singing out loud every now and again, _“Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name…”_

“Hey Dean, are you singing that off-key on purpose or are you just doing this to annoy me?” Sam jibes with a smug grin on his face.

“Ex _c_ _use you?_ What do you mean, _off-key_ ? My singing’s just perfect, thank you!” Dean retorts, inhales deeply and bawls the next lines, “ _AND ALL THE SINNERS SAINTS! AS HEADS IS TAILS, JUST CALL ME LUCIFER,_ ” while exaggeratedly drumming a rhythm on the wheel, that isn’t even _close_ to the actual beat.

Sam snorts and shakes his head with a smile, “If you say so.”

“Oh, shut up! As if you knew anything about good music anyway. _Bitch!_ ” Dean keeps his eyes focused on the road, grinning to himself.

“Hey, I’m not complaining about the music. The song’s awesome, just your singing is off.”

Dean slams on the brakes, tires screeching, and the Impala comes to a sudden halt.

In the same movement, he grabs at his ankle, produces a switchblade and snaps it open. _Never_ would his brother compliment the Rolling Stones AND miss an opportunity to call him a jerk.

“Whoa, Dean! What-” Sam attempts but gets cut short by an icy blade pressed against his throat.

“What’d you do to my brother?” Dean barks at him, “He better be alive or I swear to god-” He pinches the blade with more force into _clearly-not-Sam_ ’s neck.

“I don’t- What do you mean?” he tries to appease the infuriated Winchester who just increases the painful pressure to his knife in response. Not-Sam takes a deep breath, “He’s-” he swallows thickly against the blade, “He’s alive. At least- at least he still was when I left him.”

Not reducing the strain on the ghoul’s throat, Dean starts the Impala again, turns her around and heads back towards the cemetery. “Where is he?” he growls, glowering at his brother’s doppelganger from the corner of his eye.

“Please, I just- I wanted to get away from-” not-Sam stammers and shifts uncomfortably in his seat, trying to get away from the sharp blade that simply follows his movements, and before he even has the chance to continue his futile attempt at talking his way out of the precarious situation, he, once again, gets cut off by Dean’s angry bark, “WHERE IS HE?”

“I- we were fighting and then he… I pushed him into the grave and…” the stranger begins, but pauses and gulps audibly.

“And then _what?_ ” Dean demands, anger, impatience and concern tarnishing his tone.

“And then I… I buried him.” the cheap replica reveals quietly. He closes his eyes, swallows again, clenches the fists in his lap.

“You did _WHAT?!_ ” Dean roars and snaps his head towards the ghoul, causing the Impala to swerve dangerously for a brief moment.

The outraged driver floors the gas and snarls, “He better be alive, or you’re gonna wish I’d just cut off your decaying head and let you rot with the rest of the disgusting scum you call family!”

For the rest of the drive, not-Sam decides he’d rather stay quiet and try his best to ignore the sharp, stinging pain on his throat.

Only a few minutes later, the Impala comes to a halt - once again with screeching tires. Dean jumps out of the driver’s side, rounds the car and drags his brother’s double out of his seat with more force than necessary. He grabs him at the collar of his shirt and pulls him along as he gets a machete from his trunk, replacing the small switchblade he’d had before.

Dean shoves the ghoul before him, the blade of the machete now forcefully piercing the neck of the creature from behind.

“SAM!” the older Winchester shouts across the cemetery as loud as he can, hoping his brother will hear him coming to his help.

Very much to his surprise, he actually gets a response.

“DEAN!” It’s only a weakened cry, followed by pained coughs, but it’s there, “There were _four_ ghouls! Dean, he’s not-” More coughing reaches Dean’s ears, reverberates across the graveyard, “He’s _not me!”_ He's limping over the moonlit ground, almost trips over one of the headstones.

“Sammy! Thank god, I- I thought you were-” Dean greeted his brother, relieved to see him stumble closer towards him. He’s covered in dirt, blood dripping from a nasty gash gaping on his temple coats half of his face and parts of his flannel in a dark, brownish red. His left hand is pressed against the side of his neck and when he moves his fingers off the obvious bite marks, something in Dean’s stomach boils with rage. He’s still holding the machete onto the ghoul’s throat and growls when he presses the blade down once more.

Another of Sam’s coughs makes Dean look up at him. 

His brother’s alive. _Sammy’s alive._ That’s all that matters now.

“Dean, it was _four_ ghouls - not three, he's-” Sam stutters, pauses when he sees his brother manhandling his own doppelganger.

“Yeah, I figured that much.” Dean pushes the Sam-lookalike down to the floor, glaring at him from above. He darts a questioning look towards his brother, “You okay?”

“Yeah...this asshole here hid behind one of the headstones while I was burying his dead friend.” Sam walks over and stands next to Dean who offers him the machete. Instead of taking it though, he keeps talking, “Then he hit me in the head with my shovel, bit me in the friggin neck, turned into bizarro-me and pushed me into that goddamn grave. And then he told me he was sorry. That he didn’t wanna hurt me. That he just wanted to get away from his _family_ to live a normal life,” he huffs disparagingly, "And then he friggin' buried me alive."

“I- I just wanted to get away from here,” the monster that’s temporarily wearing Sam’s face pipes up from where it’s still laying on the dirty ground. “Do you even know how uncomfortable this cold damp mausoleum is?” he keeps lamenting, “Please, just- just let me go.”

“Yeah, not happening. Nobody hurts my brother and just gets away with it,” Dean rebukes and shakes his head in disbelief. _Why do monsters always think they can hurt and kill people and then still be left alive?_

“Yep. Also, I really don’t like eating soil,” the younger Winchester sneers, reaches for the machete Dean is still holding out for him and chops off the ghoul’s head in one swift but forceful, and very determined motion; the fact that he just beheaded a carbon-copy of himself making the whole situation even more bizarre.

They drag the now definitely dead undead to the grave Sam escaped mere minutes ago and bury the awkward doppelganger in no time, before they leave the dark and eerie cemetery for the, hopefully, last time this night.

The brothers walk back to the car, where Dean puts the machete and the shovel back into the trunk. He grabs a piece of cloth and slams the trunk lid shut with a loud bang.

The second Sam opens baby’s passenger door, on the brink of sitting down, the older Winchester stops him with a barked “Hey!” before he throws the rag at his chest, quickly followed by a reminding “Don’t bleed on my upholstery again!”

Sam snorts and brings the cloth up to his temple, carefully ducking his head when he sits down on the passenger seat.

“Jerk!” he mutters and pulls the door shut, grinning over to Dean who just slipped behind the steering wheel and closes his own door as well.

“Bitch!” Dean counters in response, a contented grin splitting his face. He puts baby in drive and leads her back on the highway.


	2. Having To Sleep In The Car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's supposed to be a short stop at a motel to finally get some well-deserved sleep turns out to be a new case

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2 is here \o/ please let me know what you think :)

They drive for two hours until they finally find a motel.

Which is approximately one hour and fifty minutes too long for Dean’s liking, since it’s already ten to seven in the morning. All he wants is a hot shower and a few hours of restful sleep in a decent bed, is that really too much to ask for?

“Hey Dean,” he turns his head and looks over at Sam while he pulls the Impala into the parking lot of the rundown motel, “Can I take the first shower? I got graveyard dirt in places where there should be no graveyard dirt.” The younger brother grimaces and shifts uncomfortably in his seat, “Friggin’ ghoul.” He lifts his hand and fumbles at the dried blood on his temple, “Does this need stitches?”

Dean turns the ignition and takes a closer look at the cut, leaning over in his seat. “Don’t think so. Tape strips should do,” he suggests and gets out of the car, “There should be some left in the first aid kit.”

They grab their duffels from the trunk, cross the parking lot and enter the shabby motel. Which is, to cap it all, empty.

“Hellooo,” Dean hollers and looks around the unoccupied room, tapping his hand repeatedly on the bell on the reception counter. To be on the absolute safe side he keeps ringing it for another twenty seconds. Just for good measure. Until Sam stops him with an annoyed _“Dean!”_ and an angry glare that starts at Dean’s face and ends at his hand on the bell.

“Right. Sorry,” the older brother clears his throat, removes his hand from the table bell and calls again for the absent desk clerk, “Anyone here?”

They wait another minute before Dean mutters a few angry and frustrated and also very tired swear words under his breath, running one of his hands over his exhausted face.

He’s just about to turn on his heels and leave the building, when he sees that Sam presses a finger on his lips while gesturing towards a door labeled ‘Staff Room’ with his other hand. A barely audible whimper can be heard through the closed door. Then silence again. A quiet gasp for air. Whimpering. Silence.

Dean draws his gun from the back of his waistband. A nod towards Sam signals for him to do the same.

They each stand on one side of the door, Sam with one hand on the doorknob, Dean holding up three fingers of his free hand, slowly counting down.

Three.

Two.

One.

One last exchange of looks.

A high-pitched shriek of fear bursts through the door when Sam pushes the handle down. The scream is muffled within the fraction of a second and he rattles the door once more.

Locked. Of _course_ it’s locked.

Dean shrugs in response to the questioning look he gets from the taller man.

“Please,” the whimpering starts again, but gets interrupted by a quiet sob. “Please don’t kill me,” another trembling sob, “I don’t wanna die.”

Sam clears his throat and speaks to the door in a comforting voice, “We’re not here to kill you, Ma’am. We’re with the FBI. We want to help.” He glances over to Dean, raising his eyebrows as a sign for him to take over.

“Agents Page and Plant. Would you mind opening the door?”

The female voice remains quiet. Several seconds tick by, before Sam and Dean hear the clicking of the lock and see the door opening a crack.

A slightly shaking, middle-aged woman with a pale, tear-streaked face takes a hesitant step out of the staff room. Her short grey hair is tousled. The sunken cheeks and deep dark circles under her swollen eyes give her an almost ghost-like appearance. She flinches a little when she notices Sam’s gun pointing in her direction, but seems to steady down as soon as he lowers it towards the floor.

The woman throws a scrutinizing look at the tall man in front of her, at his disheveled hair and grime-stained clothes and face, at his neck and his temple, both still encrusted with blood. Her eyes flick over to Dean, giving him the once-over as well.

“You two don’t really look FBI, y’know?” she muses, her raspy voice slightly shaking at the words. She wipes the tears off her face with a trembling hand, hugs her own slender figure, tensely stroking over her arms in order to calm herself down.

The older Winchester stows away his gun, back in his waistband, as he starts a brief explanation. “Yeah, we just closed a case a few hours ago. Badges are in the bag over there - here, lemme show you.” He walks over to his duffel, rummages between his clothes and pulls out his FBI badge, flipping it open for the woman to see it.

She eyes it for a brief second and sighs with relief, her face and body visibly relaxing.

“Can you tell us what happened, Miss…” Sam prods, the corner of his mouth twitching into an almost grin.

“Groves,” she answers, her voice already a lot more steady than before, “But everyone calls me Debbie. Can we maybe talk outside? I could really use a cigarette now.” Debbie pulls a pack of Marlboros out of the pocket of her denim jacket and heads towards the door, both men following her outside.

“So, Miss- uh, _Debbie,_ ” Dean starts as the woman lights her cigarette, “Why were you hiding in the staff room? Was somebody coming after you?”

She takes a drag of her cigarette and blows a cloud of dense, white smoke into the air with a huff, “You wouldn’t believe me… I'm not even sure if that actually happened or if I only imagined it. Hell, I don’t even know if _I_ believe me.” Another stinking puff of smoke fills the air.

“How about you let us decide for ourselves,” Sam reassures with a set smile, “We’ve heard some really crazy stories in our line of work.”

“Oh yeah?” She snorts a humorless laugh, “So if I told you I saw a- a _ghost…_ you wouldn’t think I’m totally nuts? Because-” she pulls on her cigarette again, “I definitely think I am nuts.”

Both Sam and Dean raise their eyebrows in surprise and surly frustration at the word _ghost_.

Dean fights hard against the urge to roll his eyes. A shower and sleep. That’s all he wanted. And what does he get instead? A _friggin' ghost_.

“You know what-” Debbie gives an irritable laugh. She seems to be trying to convince herself that there’s a logical explanation for all this, talking to herself, rather than to the two agents, “I think it was just in my imagination. Lack of sleep. I’m probably just tired. I mean... Tom isn’t even dead, he’s just-”

“Wait- _Tom_ ? You _know_ the ghost?” Dean interrupts her nervous babbling.

“Yeah, of course I know him, it was Tom, he- wait, you believe me?” she asks incredulously and taps the ash off her cigarette before taking the next drag.

When she turns her quizzical face towards Sam, he’s already smiling and gives her an affirmative nod, “Yes, we do believe you. Can you tell us exactly what you saw? Who’s Tom?”

Debbie still looks confused, shakes her head in disbelief, “I don’t- it can’t be real… his ear- and… _god,_ I can’t-” A sharp breath leaves through her nose when she brings both her hands to cover her face, rubbing vigorously at her eyes.

The younger Winchester places a soothing hand on her arm, making her look up at him, “Please, it’s okay, just tell us what you think you saw.”

Sam’s soothing hand seems to be working, since Debbie inhales deeply and begins to talk, “Okay, uh, where do I start… So, Tom- sorry, his name’s Thomas Richards. He’s the owner of this motel. He… I haven’t seen him in four days now. Usually, he never leaves for more than two days, and even then he would’ve told me. So I was worried and reported him missing to the police. But they told me I should just keep going to work and I should call again if he doesn’t turn up within the next 48 hours. _Lazy assholes.”_ She quickly glances over to Dean, “I’m sorry, no offense.”

“None taken,” he assures with a grin, “Local authorities can be kinda difficult at times.”

Nodding once, Sam agrees, “And the ghost you saw was Mr. Richards? When did you see him?”

“Yeah, this time it was him. I was working behind the counter, sorting through- uh, doesn’t matter. Anyways, Tom was suddenly standing right in front of me. I was so freaked out, I- goddammit, he had a friggin pen stuck in his eye. And his ear was… I think it was ripped off, and he was bleeding really hard. I asked him if he was okay, but he just- he kinda... _flickered_ and then he was gone, so I thought I’d just imagined it.

“But when I turned around, he was right there again… and he had this- this creepy, evil- _predatory_ smile on his face and then he chuckled, reached his hand out to me and said ‘You’re next’. And that’s when I ran and hid in the staff room. That was about twenty five minutes before I heard you ringing the bell.” She takes the last pull on her cigarette, before she flips it to the ground, grinding the heel of her foot into it until the smoke stops.

Sam and Dean exchange a brief, knowing look.

“I'm sorry to have to say this, Debbie, but Tom is most certainly dead,” Sam declares, “But, one more question. You said _this time_ it was him. What did you mean by that?”

“Oh, nothing- it’s just… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like this whole place is haunted.”

“Haunted?” Dean chimes in, the anticipation in his voice anything but joyful.

“It’s just… sometimes I kinda see people, y’know?” Debbie admits, fiddling with her sleeve before she pulls the next cigarette out of the pack, “But they’re just standing somewhere in the corner of a room, some of them with bloody faces, some said things like ‘help’ or ‘please’, but they all disappeared again within a few seconds… I always blamed that on sleep deprivation and too much caffeine. Wait- are they real, too?”

Her shocked eyes snap back and forth between the two men. God, how Dean hates these conversations _._ Telling people that all the supernatural creatures from their darkest nightmares are real will never be easy.

“You don’t have to worry,” Dean tries to comfort her, “We’ll take care of it.”

The brothers cross the parking lot to get their rock-salt shotguns and their EMF-meter out of the car, and tell Debbie to stay outside of the motel until they’re back from checking the building for ghosts.

“They’re probably bound to the motel, so you should be safe out here. Are there any guests inside at the moment?” Sam asks the still frightened woman who pulls on her freshly lit cigarette.

Debbie puffs out a new cloud of smoke, “Only one room’s occupied. Room 6. Some trucker guy. Said he’d be checked out by eight.”

“Okay, that gives us about twenty minutes to look for our spooky friends,” Dean says and nods at his brother, both drawing their shotguns and ready to enter the building.

“These ghosts Debbie described sound a lot like Death Echoes, don’t you think?” Sam reckons as soon as they’re out of earshot, “You think that this Thomas guy had the proverbial skeleton in his closet?”

“I don’t know, man. But the EMF here’s going _crazy_.” The older brother holds up the wildly blinking and beeping device for Sam to see, before he puts it back into his pocket.

They scan the entrance hall, check the staff room again, survey the hallways. While the EMF-meter rather resembles a disco ball, neither of the brothers can see or hear anything but an empty motel.

They leave the building through the back door and split up. Dean is already halfway around it, peering at the thick wood right behind it when he hears his brother calling his name. He quickly jogs over to Sam who’s standing in front of a wooden hatch, similar to a storm shelter, at the back side of the house. To the surprise of both, it’s not locked but only pushed closed.

The room in which they find themselves after they climbed down the few steps, is dark and stuffy. Dean detects, thanks to the little sunlight that shines through the open hatch from outside, the light switch quite easily, flips it - and wishes it was dark again.

The initial stroboscopic flickering from the single fluorescent tube turns into an unpleasantly blazing, biting light. It's accompanied by the typical spine-tingling buzz and the brothers eventually see the room for what it really is:

A _friggin' torture chamber._

The cold light reveals a metal desk with straps for arms, legs and the head in the middle of the squarish room. Various sorts of torture instruments hang on the bloodstained concrete walls, the metal parts flashing in every flicker of the lamp.

Neither of them dares take a breath. Lost in the eerie atmosphere, they let the realization of what they're faced with slowly sink in.

Several jars, filled with dubious liquids and other contents are carefully placed on a shelf on their left-hand side. Dean's not even sure he really wants to find out what's inside, but as always his curiosity prevails.

“Holy sh- that’s a- _Sam,_  this guy has friggin _ears_ in _jars!”_ He writhes with disgust as he yanks his hand back from one of the opaque glass containers, “This is _so gross_. Who the hell was this guy?”

“Hell, if I knew…” his brother answers with a nauseated grimace, and walks over to the other side of the chamber, letting his eyes roam over the diverse saws, pincers, pliers, needles, knives, a butcher’s cleaver, scalpels and a bunch of other tools Sam really doesn’t feel the urge to examine in greater detail.

They leave the oppressive ambiance in uneasy silence, can only breathe freely again when they are back in the open air.

“Guess now we know where the Echoes come from… but what the hell happened to our creepo here? How did he die? Debbie said he had a-” Sam pauses, his frown so deep his eyebrows are almost merging into one.

“A pen,” Dean assists, a similar frown overcasting his face.

“Yeah, thanks… So, he had a pen stuck in his eye. And his- his ear was-”

“ _Ripped off_ , yeah…” The older brother lowers his fingers again after he used them for an awkward air-quotes gesture, “Means he definitely got killed. That’s not something you’d do to yourself.”

“Nope, on no account… But Dean, we need to find out what happened. We need to find his body- or whatever else holds him here. I mean, we know that the longer a ghost remains on earth the more dangerous and violent it becomes. Not for nothing that they’re called _vengeful_ spirits… but this guy? He was already pretty dreadful when he was alive. I don’t even wanna imagine what he’d be capable of doing now.”

 

They get back to Debbie who is, once again, smoking a cigarette in front of the entrance. She seems a lot calmer now, though. Calmer and even more exhausted than before.

“Jesus, I thought you were gone for good,” she greets the two men with a relieved expression. “The trucker guy in room 6 already checked out. Please tell me the ghosts are gone.”

“How well did you know Tom?” Sam wants to know, ignoring her question entirely.

Debbie glances over at Dean, then back to Sam, “Hardly knew him at all, why? Did you find him? His- his body, I mean.” She almost forgets to take the next drag on her cigarette as she throws questioning looks at the men.

“No. We didn’t find him… but you probably shouldn't let any new guests into the motel for now. You should go home and get some rest,” Dean prompts and turns around to enter the building, “We’ll take one of the rooms, though. I really need a shower before I can put on my suit again.”

_______________________________________________

 

“Man, some police stations could really do something about their work attitude,” Dean grunts as he opens the Impala’s driver’s door and slips behind her steering wheel.

“Yeah, and this one in particular,” the younger brother agrees and slams his door shut, “But at least we got the address. Let’s go.”

The motor grumbles to life and the car rolls with its familiar gurgling from the parking lot in front of the precinct onto the street, headed towards Christopher Gibson’s house - presumably Thomas Richards’ last victim.

 

After they’d taken their respective showers in the motel, the Winchester brothers stopped at the local diner for a quick breakfast. While Dean had shoved a giant serving of pancakes alongside a, by no means less giant, side of bacon into his mouth, washing it down with at least four cups of coffee, Sam had used the free wifi to do some research on their case, consuming the same, if not an even higher amount of pure caffeine in the process.

Their next stop had been the police station, where they, thanks to the true rhetorical master stroke on behalf of former almost-lawyer Sam, eventually got the info they needed.

 

“I just don’t get how anyone can be _that_ incompetent,” the man in the passenger seat complains, “I mean, they didn’t even realize that all these missing people in the area belong to the same case. It took me three minutes to get that connection, it was friggin' obvious.”

Dean hums in approval and adds, “Yeah well, apparently they’re too busy eating donuts and discussing the latest baseball game.”

He gets a snarky huff in response (maybe because he gladly accepted the donut one of the officers offered him as well, but who is he to turn down a free heart-attack in the form of a delicious circular pastry?) before his brother speaks up again. “Oh, by the way, when we were at the diner I tried it with a simple google search first. Found a ‘Haunted Motel’ two states over, some kind of tourist attraction.”

“Seriously?!” Dean sighs deeply and rolls with his eyes.

“There’s some _really_ weird things going on - our kind of weird, I mean. But these _accidents_ only happen once a month, always on the 13th, and today’s already the 19th, so we still got a little time in between for other cases.”

“Really, Sam? _Really_ ?” The older brother throws a look of reproach at Sam before he focuses back on the street, “We’re already dealing with a haunted motel _right now_ and you’re already planning to visit the next one? You know how much I hate having to sleep in the car! How am I supposed to get any shut-eye in that psycho killer murder house of this creepy Richards guy, huh? I don’t wanna visit yet _another_ haunted motel, man.”

“Dude, you were sleeping while I was taking a shower earlier. Technically, you already got some shut-eye in a haunted motel, so stop making such a fuss about that.”

“ _First_ of all,” Dean holds his index finger right into his brother’s face for emphasis, “That was during the day! And second off,” he adds his middle finger, “I wasn’t actually _sleeping!_ ”

“Mmh, _sure,_ ” Sam snorts, grinning amusedly at Dean’s factitious excitement, “Y’know, we can sleep in the room as soon as we salt ‘n burned Thomas Richards’ body. I just hope that this way the Echoes will disappear too.”

Another shocked side glance towards his younger brother. He had almost forgotten about the damn Echoes. It could be days before they are gone as well.

“I’m not sleeping in the motel, Sam.” He vigorously shakes his head, “ _Period!_ ”

Sam snorts again, “Whatever, Dean. You can take the car, I’ll take the bed.” He chuckles slightly at his brother’s pissed expression.

“ _Fine!_ ”

“Fine.”

_______________________________________________

  
  


“Mr. Gibson-”

“ _Chris_. I said you could call me Chris,” the young man interrupts the long-haired agent, eyeing the white bandaid on his neck. Sam had patched up his ghoul bite mark as well as the cut on his temple as accurately as possible while Dean was taking his shower in the motel.

They’re seated in the living room of the severely beat up college student, all three men cradling a steaming cup of coffee in their hands.

“Chris, right,” Sam clears his throat and starts talking once more, “So, Chris, we know you told the local police that you got attacked four days ago. But you didn’t want to specify by whom, or under which circumstances?” He raises an eyebrow in question, takes a sip of his coffee.

“I already told the officers who interrogated me in the emergency room that there’s nothing to talk about. I don’t remember anything. I didn’t see the attacker. And I really don’t know what happened,” the young man scratches his chin and looks over to Dean, “All I know is that I woke up at the side of the road with a broken wrist. And then this nice soccer mom pulled her car over and took me to the nearest hospital.” Chris looks down to the cast on his left arm, traces the fingers of his other hand over its rough material, before he pinches the bridge of his nose, “I really can’t answer any more questions, I’m very sorry, agents.”

He’s about to get up when Dean pulls a folded piece of paper out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket, “Well, Chris, no offense but-” he unfolds the paper and shows it to the insecure young man, “We think you’re lying.”

Chris gulps audibly, reaches out his slightly shaking right hand and grabs the photo, viewing it closely. He bites down on his bottom lip and glances up at Dean, nothing but fear in his eyes, speechless with horror.

“Look,” Sam says in a quiet, placating tone and leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees, “We know what happened. And we’re not here to arrest you.”

The young man presses his eyes shut, blinking away his unshed tears, before he focuses back on Sam, “We just need to know how you killed him and what happened to his body.”

“Who are you people?” he asks incredulously, his voice shaking just like his hand. He looks over to Dean again who taps his index finger on the photo of Thomas Richards in Chris’ lap.

“Chris, please. We need to know where he is,” the older Winchester stresses with a piercing gaze.

“Why? What good will that do, huh? He’s dead. That’s all that matters,” Chris huffs, an angry frown to his face, “If that’s all, then please leave my house now.” He wants to get up from where he’s seated on the couch next to Sam again, but a giant hand grabs his shoulder and pushes him back down.

“I’m sorry, man,” the taller man says emphatically, “But we can’t leave until you tell us exactly where he is.”

 

_______________________________________________

 

“I can’t believe he actually ripped off his ear,” Dean huffs a humorless laugh and lets his eyes roam over the trees and the leaf-covered forest floor. He and Sam are walking through the woods behind the motel, searching for the body of its deceased owner with an untypical hobby. While they’re trying to follow the directions they eventually got out of his last victim, they keep tripping over tree roots and fallen branches every now and then.

Luckily, it’s only early afternoon and therefore it’s still bright enough for them to see, even though they’re entirely surrounded by the dense forest.

Chris told them that Richards had tried to get him from his pickup truck to the storm shelter. But as soon as Richards had unlocked and opened the hatch, he loosened his grip on Chris a little, so he could break free and uncontrollably tumbled away. He was blindfolded at first, but so scared and in panic that he held on to the first thing he could catch hold of during their fight - Richards’ ear - and yanked at it as hard as he could. Then he tore the blindfold off his eyes, just in time to duck away under the wild, infuriated punch his kidnapper had thrown.

The young man said he had a pen in the back pocket of his jeans when he was kidnapped and apparently his attacker hadn’t found it. The second he had the chance to fish it out of his pants, he slammed it into his kidnapper’s eye and watched him topple over backwards, pen still in his eye, almost landing inside the open hatch.

In his panic he dragged the dead man into the forest and only then he noticed how much his wrist actually hurt after he’d tried to break his fall during the fight.

“That’s why I couldn’t drag him that far into the woods,” Chris explained. “But I covered him with twigs and leaves, so he should be halfway well camouflaged… On the other hand- I mean it was around two in the morning and pitch-black, so I don’t really know,” he admitted.

 

It takes them 15 minutes of randomly sifting through the undergrowth, but Dean and Sam finally find the bloody pen that must’ve fallen out of Richards’ eye when Chris dragged him over the roots.

“Can’t be that far away then,” Sam states and straightens himself to take a better look around. “Wait- what’s that?” he asks, pointing the tip of his shovel past Dean.

The older Winchester turns around and crouches down. He pulls a rather big branch away and reveals a right foot, “ _Bingo_.”

With the next few twigs both his legs are freed, and leaf by leaf, twig by twig the whole body gets laid open.

Sam and Dean dig a hole to use as a makeshift grave, while the sun slowly sets - they don’t want to accidentally start a wildfire after all - and Dean uses his foot to roll the dead body into it.

It hits the floor with a muffled thud.

The thud Dean emits when he hits the tree, however, is not that muffled.

“EVERY. Damn. Time.” The mixture of a frustrated grunt and a pained groan escapes Dean’s throat as he pushes himself up to his knees in haste. He reaches for his shotgun and fires a round of rocksalt at the ghost, causing it to dissolve into thin air.

 _Goddamn_ sunset. And _goddamn_ nocturnal ghosts.

“C’mon Sam,” Dean urges, patting the dust off his pants, “Today would be good, if that suits you.”

The younger Winchester, who has already covered the corpse in salt, pulls out his Zippo. As it always is with these useless lighters, it takes several attempts before the flickering flame lights up - just as the ghost of Thomas Richards appears right in front of him. The ghosty pen in his eye twitches awkwardly at Sam’s face when the spirit glares at him and snarls, “You’re next.”

Sam doesn’t give him the chance to make good on his threats though, drops the lighter and watches Richards burst into flames.

_______________________________________________

 

When Dean’s done with his second shower of the day, this time to get rid of tree bark, leaves, and mud, he grabs his duffel and heads towards the door of their motel room.

“Where are you going?” His brother throws a puzzled look at him, lifting his head from his pillow while he props himself on his elbows.

Dean pushes the door open, “I got a date with my Baby, remember?”

“You’re really sleeping in the car?” Sam asks with an amused grin.

“You betcha,” Dean answers, yawning loudly as he takes a step through the door, “You can deal with those Echoes, tell them they’re dead ‘n stuff. Imma get some way overdue shut-eye now.”

Sam shakes his head, smiling at his defiant, stubborn brother and lets himself fall back into his pillow as the door closes again.

Dean crosses the parking lot and climbs into the Impala. He makes himself comfortable in the backseat, stretching his legs across the upholstery and snuggling down in the smooth leather.

They can talk to Debbie tomorrow to let her know that everything’s cleared and that she can go back to work without worries. The Echoes will probably disappear sooner or later anyway… _most likely._ And maybe they should seal the storm shelter too... 

“Y’know, baby,” Dean mumbles contentedly into her leather seat, “I didn’t mean it when I said I hate having to sleep in you. At least you’re not haunted.”

With these words, he finally drifts off to a, admittedly not very comfortable, but therefore very un-ghosty sleep.


	3. Cassette Collection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do unicorn-clouds, the Smurfs and a giant ball pit have in common?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiya guys, this is chapter 3 of the Classic Winchester Adventures, filling the bingo square "Cassette Collection"   
> I had a blast writing this chapter, I laughed, I cried, I puked in my mouth a little.  
> I hope you like it, please leave Kudos and comments and tell me what you think :)

The clattering of crockery and cutlery mixes with the cheerful, nevertheless serene voices in the well patronized diner. It's just after eight in the morning and Dean gives a tired yawn. He tries to cover it with his palm though, before shoving a bite of his blueberry pancake into his mouth, moaning contentedly around the fork, his eyes closed.

“Should I give you two a little privacy?” Sam takes a sip of his coffee and grins over the rim of his steaming cup. He places it next to his plate with avocado toast with egg, of which he takes a generous bite.

“You’re just jealous because your food looks like someone already ate and then threw it back up again,” Dean scoffs and moans once again around a mouthful of his delicious pancake. He waves the fork around, pointing vaguely at the remains of his dish and, mouth still full and split into a wide smile, says “This tastes friggin’ _awesome,_ man.”

Sam heaves a slightly frustrated sigh and looks at the amused grin on his brother’s face, swallows politely before he answers, “Y’know Dean, if you gave it a try you’d realize it actually tastes pretty good.” The taller man eyes the unappetizing mess of squished blueberries in batter, drowning in syrup on Deans plate and adds, “And well… my food is, in contrast to your…’awesome’ pancake, at least _healthy_.”

“Uh-huh,” the older brother huffs disapprovingly and shoves the next, maybe a little too big forkful into his mouth, smearing syrup all over his right cheek in the process. A drop of sticky golden liquid sugar slowly travels down his jaw, pauses at his chin for a brief moment and leaves Dean’s face. It splashes onto the front of his flannel where it creates a dark stain, syrup slowly seeping into the fabric, diameter growing by the minute.

Sam observes his brother in _awe_ \- his pleased grin, stuffed round cheeks, the way he’s chewing contentedly on his pancake while humming in enjoyment, happy crinkles around his closed eyes, completely oblivious to the mess on his face and shirt… it’s official, he’s an actual squirrel.

The younger brother snorts a laugh through his nose and shakes his head before he turns his eyes back to the laptop screen next to his plate, and takes another bite of his avocado toast.

“Hey Dean,” Sam clears his throat and swipes toast crumbs off his mouth with a napkin, “Before we’re driving to that ‘Haunted Motel’... y’know, it’s still more than two weeks until the thirteenth, so technically we’d have time for another case.” He glances up to his brother who just finished the last remnants of his pancake, now washing it down with a gulp of his, most likely cold, coffee. His brows knit into a deprecating frown as he puts his empty cup back on the table.

“Uh… yeah, sure,” Dean scrubs a hand over his face, a little surprised at his fingers sticking to his cheek. He holds his syrupy hand in front of his face, apparently contemplating whether he should wipe the gluey sugar on a napkin or rather lick it from his fingers. When he sees Sam’s judgingly raised eyebrows, he decides on the former, cleaning both his hand and his face thoroughly. “So-” he puts down the napkin and devotes all his attention back to Sam- “the case?”

“Right...” Sam thrusts his plate aside and pulls the laptop in front of him instead, eyes quickly skimming the screen. “So, there’s been a few articles in the local newspaper. Relating… weird stuff.”

“ _Weird_ stuff? Uh… can you be a little more precise, maybe?”

The taller man purses his lips into a tight smile when the waitress appears at their table to refill their empty mugs, and throws a muttered ‘thank-you’ at her retreating back.

He turns to face Dean again and starts, “So get this. There are reports about things like… the sky being green and the grass blue on one day. Or clouds in the most ridiculous shapes. There was a witness who mentioned a-” He reads the next part right from the screen, quoting the witness word for word- “a ‘unicorn-cloud bouncing across the sky’.”

Dean snorts into his coffee, shoots his brother an amused, curious grin, “A _what_ now?”

“ _'Unicorn-cloud’”_ Sam repeats, suppressing a smile. “Another day all the cars in that town were replaced by toy cars, few weeks later the school looked like a castle in a fairy tale and some houses were turned into some really _interesting_ shapes.” He turns the laptop screen towards Dean to show him tiny pictures of the colorful, bulbous houses and receives an irritated frown.

“One day the lake was covered in foam, like a giant bubble bath. Then another day there was the-” This time not even Sam has the self-restraint to stifle his laugh- “ _smurf gang_ and apparently they were running around the town and told everyone they’re trying to escape a giant cat called Azrael and his owner Gargamel.

“Another day, about a month later, every time somebody clapped their hands it became dark as night, and when they clapped again it was day again.” Sam pauses to take a swig of his coffee, his tongue poking out between his teeth afterwards as he chuckles slightly.

“Welp, sure does sound like our kind of weird,” Dean says and snatches the laptop from Sam to read through the articles himself. Maybe his brother’s just messing with him again.

Still cradling the cup in his hands, Sam adds, “Thing is, these... _incidents_ don’t follow a particular pattern, there’s no recognizable structure. They seem to happen arbitrarily. Completely at random intervals.”

“How come we only hear about that stuff now?” the older Winchester wants to know, looking up from the screen and absentmindedly taking a sip of his coffee.

“Well, nobody’s been hurt yet. So far it’s only been pretty innocuous and-” Sam points at the picture of a panicky, tiny blue gnome with a white hat on the laptop and snickers- “to be honest, rather funny things. Also, these, let’s call them _phenomena_ last, as far as I got it right, only one day each.”

Dean flips the laptop shut and empties his coffee in one go. He fishes a few dollar bills out of his wallet and jams them between the empty cup and the tabletop as he pushes himself up, “Well, let's just be on the safe side then. What’d you say where this town was?”

 

______________________________

 

Two days later, Sam and Dean are standing in front of a big, although sort of inconspicuous house. There’s a huge wooden sign in the front yard, colorful and elegantly curved letters saying ‘Nancy’s Home for Children’.

They walk past the sign, gravel crunching under their feet, as Dean straightens the cuff on his dress shirt sleeve that’s peeking out of his FBI jacket.

They’d spent the time since their arrival investigating the previous phenomena, questioning witnesses and even talked to the mayor, until they found out that all incidents are somehow related to one single place - the town’s foster home.

“As it’s most probably a witch... you got your ring?” Sam asks when they reach the door, already holding up his fist to knock.

Dean raises his right hand and wiggles his fingers, showing off the silvery shining iron ring he put on for this very purpose, “Yep.” What is it with monsters and their aversion for iron anyway? He nods towards the sign in the yard as his brother knocks on the door, “So, you think this is some kind of Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee thing?”

“I don’t know, Dean. That’s why we’re here and we’ll just ask politely,” Sam deadpans and clothes his face in his typical fake courtesy FBI agent smile, before he turns back to the door, waiting for it to open.

 

______________________________

 

“Oh God, no. Please no clowns!!!” Sam shakes his head frantically and waves his hands around in a defensive gesture. Desperately seeking help, he looks at Nancy and shakes his head once more for emphasis, sheer panic in his eyes.

Nancy, the foster mother and part-time witch as they found out about an hour ago, reaches out with a soothing hand and places it on Sam’s arm, “No clowns, don’t worry.” She smiles fondly at the man on her couch and glances over to his brother, one of her eyebrows raised in question.

“Naw dammit, why not, Nancy?” one of the two kids in the room complains loudly as he throws both his arms exaggeratedly into the air and sinks down onto his seat with a sulky sigh, before he crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“Hey,” the brunette woman cautions with a raised finger, “I said no swearing, Tim, you know that.” She pats his knee and strokes his cheek with her index finger in a quick motion, “Because you already made your wish, and I think Sam here-” Nancy cocks her head towards the taller Winchester who still looks a little frightened- “doesn’t seem too happy about clowns. You said you wanted both of them to be here tomorrow, so we gotta accept his request and leave the clowns out.”

Dean clears his throat to drag the boy’s attention and leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees while he starts talking, “Y’know Tim, Sammy here ain’t a big fan of clowns, but I’m sure we’re gonna have fun even without ‘em, okay?” He puts on a wide grin and winks at the now also smiling boy in front of him.

“Ugh, fine,” Tim says, gets up and points at Sam. “But you’re coming tomorrow, aren’t you?!” he adds in a demanding tone, causing the younger Winchester to nod in response and smile as well. Tim leaves the living room in a haste, now that he’s got what he wanted, and drags the other kid, Ella as she told them earlier, along with him.

“Sorry, he can be a little difficult sometimes.” Nancy turns back to face Sam and Dean again, her beaming blue eyes focussing on the latter as the corners of her mouth curl upwards.

“No problem, really,” Dean reassures her and licks over his bottom lip, mirroring her flirting smirk.

 

They realized that Nancy was the witch as soon as they entered her house and she reacted to Dean’s iron ring when they shook hands. That’s why they immediately dropped their FBI fassade and did some straight talking instead.

That’s why they also realized that Nancy was by no means one of the evil, obnoxious representatives of her kind, but actually quite the opposite. That she’s nothing but friendly and warm-hearted, loving and caring towards her foster children.

Nancy explained how she’d always had magical abilities, that her family had taught her how to use them, but that they wanted her to harm other people, to do black magic. She, however, didn’t want to hurt anyone, so she left her coven and started a new family, in a new town - with her foster kids. She wanted to be good.

Despite his usual reluctance regarding witches, Dean couldn’t help but sympathize with her. The beautiful long brown hair, the errand strands that fall into her pretty face whenever she cocks her head in that adorable way, her radiant, bright blue eyes, her athletic figure and her mesmerizing smile might have played a crucial role in his decision making process. A fact he’d never admit to his brother though.

Nancy only ever uses her witchcraft for the sole purpose of birthday presents, she explained further. Whenever it’s one of her fosterling’s birthdays, the kid can make one wish for this special day, on condition that it serves other people in equal measure.

Which might be the reason why the whole town’s been affected more often than not.

“Nancy, I’m afraid you gotta stop this,” Sam told her earnestly when she finished talking. “Someday someone might get hurt. Or other hunters will find you, and I’m not sure if they are as reasonable and-” he stopped to glare at his brother who was currently balancing a tiny basketball on his forehead, while three overly excited children applauded at his remarkable trick and laughed hysterically- “ _mature_ as we are...”

 

In the end, when they're all standing in the extensive backyard, they agree that Nancy could keep using her magic, but should restrict it to a small area around the foster home and shield it from the rest of the town, so as not to drag even more attention to the untypical spectacles.

They also agree, at the children’s urgent entreaty, that the Winchesters will definitely stay and celebrate Paul’s birthday with the whole foster family the next day - much to Dean’s delight.

Nobody wants to tell Dean or Sam what Tim had actually wished for. “It’s a _surprise_ ,” the boy declares proudly, showing off his toothy grin. Well… at this very moment it isn’t _that_ toothy, as two of his front teeth are missing, but still, he seems exceedingly happy. At least it gives him an adorable lisp.

The brothers say their goodbyes to the lively gang and drive back to their motel, both equally full of anticipation and perhaps even a little fear at the same time.

 

______________________________

 

It’s almost ten am the next day as the Impala pulls up in front of ‘Nancy’s Home for Children’ and comes to a stop. Dean turns the ignition, he and his brother open their respective doors at the same time. Both their faces lighten up when they already hear children screaming and laughing in excitement, even though they’re still on the other side of the road.

Once again they walk past the big sign and knock on the door. When nobody opens after a few moments of waiting, they decide to round the building to get to the backyard where all the happy noises seem to come from.

“C’mon Sam, Nancy promised not to get any clowns, I think you’re safe,” Dean says with a chuckle when Sam hesitates for a second in front of the garden gate.

As soon as they reach the back porch they’re greeted by three kids almost running right into them, followed by Nancy’s warning voice about someone named Tyler being responsible that nobody gets hurt.

“Kids,” she mutters under her breath, shaking her head, giggling to herself. “Oh hey, Sam, Dean, glad you could make it!” Nancy offers them a warm smile and gives both men a brief once over, “What, no fake FBI suits today?”

Before either of the brothers can answer, they get interrupted by a loud announcement of Tim who sprints past them, taking a speedy run-up, “CANNONBALL!” and jumps into the giant ball pit that replaced the creek that usually passes through the backyard. Small plastic balls in all colors of the rainbow explode into the air as his small body gets devoured by the colorful hole in the floor. He bursts through the surface with a high-pitched, excited shriek and climbs out of the pit, running straight towards the grown ups on the porch.

“Hey there, Tim,” Sam says and emits a dull ‘hmmpf’ when the little boy crashes into him, throwing both his arms around the taller Winchester’s waist in pure delight. Sam ruffles a large hand through the boy’s auburn hair, coaxing a burst of joyful laughter from him.

“Did you see my super duper cannonball?” All three adults nod excessively in affirmation, wide smiles on every one of their faces.

Tim turns to Dean and hugs him as well, although not as racily as he did with Sam, now that he’s not running anymore.

“Happy Birthday, Tim,” Dean congratulates and scoops the squeaking boy up into his arms, “How old are you now?”

The kid holds up both hands, showing six fingers to the two men. “I’m six!” Tim states, lisp strong on the first and last letter of the word, and he thrashes around in Dean’s arms, struggling to get down on the floor again.

The second his feet meet the floor, he grabs Sam’s hand and drags him through the back door and into the house, “I gotta show you-” The rest of the sentence gets swallowed as the door falls closed, causing both Dean and Nancy to chuckle slightly.

“So, a giant bouce house, huh?” Dean asks, peaking through one of the windows to watch several kids jumping around the living room. He huffs a laugh when he sees Sam being pulled into their middle, surrounded by two toddlers, Tim, one kid around the age of ten and two teenagers who shoot him apologetic twin grins.

“Yeah, he wished for the whole house to be turned into a bouncer castle. The ball pit creek was just a little addition I thought might be fun for the kids too,” Nancy says and walks over to a small table with cake and muffins, “Want one?”

Dean gladly takes one of the chocolate covered pastries with sprinkles on top and takes a generous bite, “Nothing like muffins for breakfast,” he mumbles with a contented smile.

He stands next to Nancy who has a worried frown on her face as she looks towards the far end of the back porch. A little girl, the one they met the day before, Dean thinks, is sitting on the floorboards, hugging her own knees, while absentmindedly gazing across the yard.

“What’s up with her?” Dean asks Nancy in a calm voice, so the little girl won’t hear him.

“Ella’s only been with us two weeks… She lost her parents in a car accident, and I can’t really get through to her.” Nancy bites down on her bottom lip, her concern about the little girl obviously written in her blue eyes.

Dean swallows the last bite of his muffin and crumples the paper in his hand. “Would it be okay if I tried talking to her?”

“Uhm,” she gives him a irritated look in response. She must see the sincerity and gentleness in his eyes though, because after a few moments of consideration she says, “Yeah, sure. I’m gonna be inside and make sure the mob lets your brother live.”

Dean crosses the porch. “Ella right? Okay if I sit with you?” She nods, the movement only barely noticeable, and the man takes a seat right next to her, letting his eyes roam the beautiful garden.

“How old are you, Ella?” he wants to know. Not the best conversation starter, but it does the job.

“Five.” The little girl turns her head towards Dean and adds, “And a half.”

“Five and a half, wow, so you’re basically almost a grown up, right?” He nudges against her arm, causing a shy giggle into her knees.

“Wanna tell me why you’re not playing with the others?” he asks her with a fond smile.

Ella stops giggling and hugs her knees even more tightly. Several seconds pass until she mumbles, “It’s my mommy’s birthday, too.”

Oh great. Well done, Winchester. Making a small girl even more miserable than she already is.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t know that,” he tries to appease, “You miss your parents, huh?” He puts an arm around her shoulders when she, once again, nods into her knees. “Y’know, I lost my mom too.” He doesn’t even know why he’s telling her this, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

She lifts her head and looks at him, teary-eyed, blinking her long lashes repeatedly, “Really?”

“Yeah, I was four,” he says, rubbing soothing circles into her shoulder, “My brother Sammy was only six months old, so he doesn’t really remember her. But I do. And I miss her every single day.”

Ella leans against him, relaxes into his tender embrace, not even looking up. “Every day?” Her voice barely more than a whisper.

“Every day,” Dean repeats. “You never forget your parents. And it’ll always hurt to think about them. But, the thing is, I’ve always had my brother, y’know. He’s my family. And even though your mom and dad can’t be here with you right now, you got a family too. You’ve got Nancy, and Tim, and Tyler, and Jessie... and all the others whose names I can’t remember.”

He can feel Ella’s chuckle against his ribs and goes on, “But Ella, that doesn’t mean you don’t love your parents anymore. Or that you have to forget them. It just means that there are people who care about you, who are there for you when you need them.”

Dean pushes himself off the porch and stretches a hand out for the slightly confused looking little girl, “C’mon, I wanna show you something.”

 

Dean opens the passenger door for Ella to climb into the car, and then rounds the Impala to get behind her wheel. He quickly rummages through his cassette collection, decides for a Led Zeppelin tape and puts it into the deck.

For a few minutes, they just sit and listen to quiet classic rock, until Dean starts talking again. “This was my parent’s car. For my brother and me this is _home,”_ he says. “Whenever I miss them, or I think I might forget them, I just sit in here and remember the time when we were still all together. It’s not the same, I know, but… it’s our home.”

He turns his head towards Ella on the passenger seat, “Do you have something that belonged to your parents?”

Ella nods and fishes a silver necklace out of her shirt collar with careful fingers, “This was my mommy’s.” She holds the little round pendant out for Dean, before her eyes get stuck on the tape deck, a small grin ghosting over her lips, “And my Daddy had a cassette collection like you. I’ve got it under my bed in my room.”

Dean darts her a wide smile in response, “See? They’re always here. Whenever you listen to your dad’s music, he’s right there with you. And-” he points at her necklace- “so is your mom.”

He fumbles for his wallet, flips it open and pulls out the picture of his mom, along with a small piece of paper. It’s slightly crinkled and a little rough and even torn on some places around the edges. “Here.” Dean offers Ella the photo, “This is my mom.”

She takes it, mirrors the smile Mary has on the picture, and runs her fingers gently over the photo, “She’s very pretty.”

“Yeah, she was,” Dean answers. He unfolds the small piece of paper and grins.

“What’s that?” Ella wants to know and leans across the front seat.

“Sammy, my brother, gave this to me when we were teenagers. He said he’d seen the quote and had to think of me, so he wrote it down. I always have it with me. It’s from a guy called Cicero, he said: _‘The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart’_.”

Dean chuckles at the puzzled expression on Ella’s face, “It means that, as long as we keep thinking of the people we lost, they’re never completely dead.” He points a finger at her chest, “Because they still live inside our hearts.”

 

They spend the rest of the day jumping around in the bounce house and drowning in the ball pit, eating tons of amazing birthday cake, playing tag and flirting with Nancy - the latter only on the part of Dean.

When they’re about to leave the foster home after dinner - pizza for everyone - Ella tugs on Dean’s flannel sleeve.

Nancy’s smile is even wider than usual as she’s beaming at Dean with a knowing expression. He crouches down to Ella and she hands him a cassette, shyly glancing down at the floor. He takes it from her and reads the heading: ‘Bruce Springsteen - ‘84’.

“That one of your dad’s?” Dean asks her with a broad grin.

Ella’s gaze is still focused on the floor as she hums her response, “Mhm.” She slowly looks up at him and gives him a smile that makes his chest ache, “I want you to have it… so you don’t forget me.”

“Oh geez, thank you, sweetheart.” He pulls her into his arms and hugs her tightly, whispering in her ear, “Your Dad had a great taste in music, y’know.”

 

“Thank you for talking to her,” Nancy says to Dean when they’re out on the street, standing next to the Impala, “She seems… I don’t know, _lighter_ somehow. I think you actually helped her a lot, so, thank you.” The brunette woman stands up on her tiptoes and cranes her head to place a soft kiss on Dean’s cheek.

The Impala heads off, Sam holding the Springsteen cassette in his hands, “Seems like someone’s got a new girlfriend,” and wiggles his eyebrows to tease his brother.

Dean snatches the cassette from Sam’s hands and glares at him in feigned offendedness. “You’re just jealous because she likes me better than you. And because I got a present and a peck on the cheek and you didn’t.” He briefly contemplates whether he should stick out his tongue at his younger brother, but then decides against it. He’s a mature, grown-up man after all.

“Well, yeah. I mean, while you were flirting with the ladies, I almost threw up, because the kids made me eat like five pieces of cake and then wanted me to jump all around the house.” Sam chuckles to himself, however, which means he’s not really as pissed as he pretends to be.

 

A few minutes pass in companionable silence until the younger brother speaks up again, “Y’know, I get why she’s doing this. Nancy, I mean. Did you see how happy the kids were? It’s absolutely worth the risk.”

Dean simply nods in response, eyes focused on the street, as they’re headed towards the next motel for the night.


	4. Singing Old Songs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it wasn't the best idea to accept a gift from a witch with a very evil sense of humor...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiya guys :) In time for the first of April, here comes chapter 4, I hope you can forgive me for what happens to the Impala...

Maybe they should’ve checked the cassette tape case _before_ they put the tape into the deck. Maybe they would’ve seen the little note inside the little plastic case if they’d done that. And maybe, just _maybe_ they would’ve decided against this particular cassette. Or at least this one particular song on it.

Looking back, it was kind of obvious. Nancy did have this look of adoration when they were standing in front of the Impala. It was followed by a barely there smug smirk, now that Dean thinks back to that moment.

She also had this amused, knowing expression when Ella handed Dean the cassette of her father.

What Dean hadn’t thought of at the time though, was that Ella must’ve given Nancy the tape before she offered it to Dean, to ask for permission, and that Nancy is a witch after all. A witch with a cruel sense of humor. A _very_ cruel sense of humor.

 

But they are on very high spirits after their day of celebrating little Tim’s birthday, jumping around inside the giant bounce house, drowning in the massive ball pit, and eating too much cake and way too many muffins for their own good, so, without thinking much about it, Dean shoves ‘Bruce Springsteen - ‘84’ into the cassette deck and hits the play button.

The first song on the tape is ‘Born In The USA’. As soon as the first notes blast through the speakers, Dean nods his head to the beat, broad smile on his face, left arm hanging loosely out of his open window, tapping on the outside of the driver’s door, right arm relaxed on the wheel. It only takes him until the first chorus to sing out loud, whereby...if you’re particular about it, you can't necessarily call it singing, but rather bawling.

Dean slams both his palms on the steering wheel. “Boooorn-” he snaps his head towards his brother- “in the USA, I was-” another clap against the leather wheel- “Booorn in the USA…”

The off-key singing of his older brother doesn’t stop Sam from joining in, and they both belt out the whole song at the top of their lungs, smiling and laughing and thrumming the beat against the dashboard and the steering wheel, while driving off into the sunset.

 

They are almost forty minutes into their drive when the tenth track starts to play, _“_ _Well now you may think I'm foolish, for the foolish things I do…”_

Dean turns the volume down a little and says, “Man, I love Springsteen. Ella’s dad really had a good taste in music, didn’t he.” He smiles a slightly sad smile to himself, feeling infinitely sorry the little girl had to lose her parents. At least he still had his father and his brother. And this car. But Ella’s in good hands now at Nancy’s, he thinks. She’s got a whole new family of amazing people around her who will for sure help her deal with her loss and with finding new happiness.

“Well honey it ain't your money…” Sam’s voice interrupts his wallowing in memories and he turns up the volume again, “'Cause baby I got plenty of that.”

Both brothers chorus the next lines in unison, amused, contented grins covering both their faces, “I love you for your pink Cadillac, crushed velvet seats, riding in the back, cruising down the str-”

Dean stops singing when his fingers feel something weird all of a sudden, and he hits the brakes. _Hard._ And pulls her over to the side of the road with a jerky yank on the wheel.

“Dean, what the-”

“STOP SINGING!” Dean yelps at his utterly confused brother and reaches a hand out to mute the radio.

It’s nighttime by now, the inside of the impala pitch black, the empty road in front of them dimly lit in the beam of the Impala’s headlights.

Several seconds tick by in absolute silence, only Dean’s gasping breath, forcefully pushed through his nose is audible.

“What’s wrong now, Dean?” Sam asks and, even though Dean can’t see him in the darkness, he knows that his brother has his typical _what-the-fuck-Dean_ eyebrow aimed at him.

“My Baby-” Dean sputters. To be precise, it’s rather a whine than anything else.

Sam waits for him to further explain, but when nothing follows after, except more panicked breathing and a slight shifting in his seat, he asks, “Yeah, so? What about her?”

“Gimme your phone,” Dean demands through clenched teeth, unsuccessfully trying to suppress another whine.

“Why do you need-”

“ _Just give it to me!_ ”

Sam hands him the required phone after fishing it out of his pocket and Dean immediately opens the flashlight app, lighting up the car’s inside within the fraction of a second.

 

The dead silence that permeates the entire car is suffocating. Both brothers hold their breaths in shock, as they take in the drastic change of scenery. It’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. What actually does drop, is Dean’s jaw. Pure horror is written in his eyes, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish on land.

Sam’s hysterical snort breaks the silence as he bursts out laughing, hands flailing around and grasping Dean’s shoulder while he desperately struggles for air.

Dean’s hand is shaking when he brings it up to point the flashlight at his steering wheel. No, not _his_ steering wheel, this is so _not his steering wheel._

It’s fuzzy fleece.

And it’s friggin’ _pink._

The light beam slowly roams across the dashboard, the _pink_ dashboard to be precise _,_ travels to the bench seat in between them, which is, _of course,_ covered in _pink_ crushed velvet, and eventually settles on Sam’s face. Who has one of his giant hands pressed on his mouth. His eyes are wet with tears, the bulging veins on his forehead and both temples are throbbing, his whole head red like a tomato on fire, while he’s trying his darndest not to explode with laughter.

The moment Dean lowers Sam’s phone in resignation and lets his head loll back against the backrest, his brother can’t keep his emotions inside his body anymore and fills the car with whole-hearted sounds of pure joy.

“Oh, shut up, Sammy,” Dean moans in nothing but frustration, “This ain’t fucking funny, man!” He bangs his door open and climbs out of the car, takes a few steps into the night. The man folds over, his hands braced on his thighs. He takes a deep breath, straightens himself and turns around to face the vehicle in its entirety.

The flashlight raises again in Dean’s hand as he slowly approaches the Impala, shining the light over her varnish. Her mother. _Fucking_. **Pink**. **_Varnish._**

“ _Baby_ …” he whispers, wretched, while he lets his tender fingers run over her hood, tenderly caressing the smooth cold surface, his voice barely working when he whispers a questioning “What-”

That’s all he can get out in his devastated state.

The passenger door opens and reveals an overly exuberant Sam, frantically gasping for air, almost falling out of the car while trying to climb out of his seat, still not able to control his laughter.

The taller man can barely keep himself standing, now that he can see the full extent of the Impala’s condition. And, after a look at his older brother, also the full extent of his condition.

Dean buries his head in his hands, vainly trying to stifle the pterodactyl shriek that presses through his fingers, scrubs them over his face, furiously rubbing his eyes.

Nope. Still pink.

“Oh, come on,” he whimpers and kicks an angry foot into the air.

“Your car...looks….like a...pimp mobile,” Sam manages to stammer out in between his giggles, clasping at his own stomach with one hand. His face freezes in an awkward exhilarated expression for a moment, before he looks Dean straight in the eyes and, followed by the next laughing fit, bursts out, “Oh my God. It’s the _Pimpala_!”

Dean’s eyes roll so far into his head it hurts. “Ha Ha, Sammy,” he rolls them back to the front and shoots his brother a glare that could kill, if he only tried hard enough, he’s sure of that. “Glad my misery is entertaining you that much. Really. I’m _thrilled._ ”

 

It takes Sam far too long to catch his breath, to calm down enough to regain (almost) complete control over his face and body again.

A long time for Dean to just stand and stare. Eyes wide open. Still full of disbelief and consternation.

A reassuring pat on his shoulder tears him out of his trance-like state and he stops his absentminded scratching over the scruff on his own cheek to look up at his brother.

“Sammy…. _”_ Dean downright whines in despair towards Sam’s face, “My _car..._ She’s- she’s... _mutilated._ Her… _seats-_ and, the steering wheel is- She’s friggin _PINK!_ ” He almost spits at his brother.

Sam  gives his shoulder another gentle pat, “C’mon, Barbie,” a bad wink, “I gotta show you something.”

Dean briefly contemplates murdering his brother - _thin ice, Sammy, thin ice -_ but follows him inside the car instead. His death will have to wait.

“Look at this, Dean,” Sam starts, amused smile on his lips, and hands his brother a small note, “I found this in the cassette tape case.”

With a raised eyebrow, Dean takes the proffered piece of paper, scrutinizing the neatly handwritten message:

 _Hope you take it with humor :)_   
_Ella said she’d like your car a lot better in pink, so I hope you share that opinion_   
_It’ll wear off within 24 hours though, so don’t worry ;)_   
_Best wishes_ _  
_Nancy

“I’m gonna kill her.” Dean clenches his fists, crumpling up the note in the process. His jaw clenches too, nostrils quivering. “I’m gonna kill her,” he repeats more quietly.

His brother sighs. “No, you won’t.”

“Oh, but I will!” A sharp breath through his nose. A humorless laugh. “My Baby looks like friggin’ Pink Panther’s car, Sam,” he complains, “I can’t just...let this slide.” He claws at his steering wheel and flinches as soon as his fingers meet the squashy, fluffy texture, and immediately pulls his hand back again.

_Shit._

“Oh come on, Dean, it’s not _that_ bad,” Sam tries to placate. “‘sides, she wrote that it only lasts 24 hours, right? Man the fuck up-” he slightly shifts in his seat, lets a hand run over the upholstery between them- “and enjoy the crushed velvet.”

There’s exactly two seconds of silence, before both men burst twin snorts through their noses. Even Dean’s grumpy grimace lightens up, the tension in his body decreasing the longer they’re laughing.

“Wow,” Sam chuckles after a while, wipes a tear from his cheek, “I never thought I’d ever say anything like that.”

Dean’s shoulders are still slightly trembling as he keeps giggling, “What, tell me I should enjoy the crushed velvet?”

They exchange affectionate whacks against each other’s arms.

With the utmost reluctance, Dean puts the Pimpala in drive and leads her back on the road, “Friggin witches, man!”


	5. "Two Queens or One King?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just another small inconvenience for our beloved Deano ^^

They keep driving in silence. No way Dean would risk an actual ‘Thunder Road’ in front of him. He doesn’t even want to imagine what would happen if they listened to ‘Fire’. No thanks, he doesn’t need a throwback to the worst day in his life.

Goddamn Springsteen. A ‘Highway Patrolman’ might be even worse. Who wouldn’t stop a friggin’ pink Impala with two flanneled dudes (one grumpy as hell, the other one looking high as a kite from all the laughing and still more or less successfully stifling his occasional giggles)? And the officers would definitely check the trunk, and maybe a bunch of machetes, silver knives, sawed-off shotguns and a friggin colt under a giant pentagram aren’t the easiest things to explain. No one would ever believe the two of them were FBI. Or basically any other agency.

It’s a shame ‘Back in Black’ isn’t on the tape. Goddamn Springsteen.

“Friggin’ witches,” Dean mutters under his breath, fingers grudgingly curled around the wheel.

“Huh?” Sam tiredly cocks his head towards his brother, “What was that?”

“Nothin’.”

“C’mon Dean, you gotta admit, it's at least a  _ little  _ funny. Could be a lot worse.” Sam yawns loudly. “‘sides, it’s gonna wear off in less than twenty hours from now, so chill,” he says and snuggles into the crushed velvet covering the backrest, head leaning against the cold window, and closes his eyes.

It’s just after midnight and they’re not far from the next motel. Which, in turn, isn’t far from the ‘Haunted Motel’, thus their next case.

There’s always a ‘next case’. Never a break. Always another monster of the week. Never just time to breathe. And now, to add insult to injury, his car is mother fucking pink. How great is that.

At least that means they have one whole day off. They can’t work on a case pulling up in a pink Impala after all. Not so long as Dean still has a little self-respect left, that is.

Dean glances at the dashboard clock. Nineteen hours and forty-seven minutes until his baby is back to normal.

It’s four more days till the 13th. Which leaves them one day at the motel to do some online research and then another three days for investigating the building, talking to eye-witnesses, maybe hitting the local library.

Nineteen hours and forty-five minutes until his car is back to black.

Dean heaves a heavy sigh and tightens his grip around the wheel. The fluffy fleece does feel sort of nice beneath his fingers. And yet it's nothing compared to the smooth leather that has given him so much security and support over the years. Moreover, it’s really hard to get blood stains or any other stuff the brothers are covered in on an almost daily basis out of the velvet. It’s plain impractical.

After another ten minutes drive, they finally reach the motel, park the Impala in front of the building and head towards the entrance hall, where a tired-looking desk clerk greets them with a sloppy ‘Hello and welcome to Motel 6’.

Dean nods a brief ‘hi’ in response as they approach the desk and quickly peeks through the big front window at his car. Or more specifically, at the fuzzy pink fleece that peeps out behind the windshield. Even though the Impala is only barely lit by a yellowish street lamp on the far end of the parking lot and the motel’s neon sign, the reddish ‘6’ flickering every now and again, the bright pink color of the car really stands out against the black and grey surroundings.

He takes a sharp inhale through his nose and faces the desk clerk who only now looks up from his phone.

Sam leans his elbows on the counter, exhausted and a little grouchy after being woken up from his short nap by a harsh jolt against his shoulder not even two full minutes ago.

“Two Queens?” the desk clerk asks, raising an annoyed eyebrow at both Sam and Dean before his eyes wander behind them. His second eyebrow lifts, mirroring the first one and his eyes widen in surprise for a brief moment as he catches a glimpse of the pink Impala. A smug grin tugs at the corner of his mouth when he adds, “Or one King?”

Before Dean gets the chance to throw a tantrum that’s more than obvious threatening to happen, Sam rushes a quick ‘Two Queens’ and hurriedly grabs the keys the desk clerk places on the counter with a sardonic smirk. The taller man clutches his brother’s elbow and drags the deadly glaring man out of the entrance hall and back into the fresh air again.

Dean clenches his jaw. Huffs sharp breaths through his nose.

“Nineteen hours and thirty minutes,” he murmurs through gritted teeth, his brother already at the door to their room.


	6. Motel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> remember that "Haunted Motel" Sam found while doing research on the murder motel in chapter 2? well, the Winchesters do (although Dean is really not that buzzing with anticipation), so they just have to get to the bottom of it, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sighs deeply* so, I did, in fact, not forget about this series, I was just a little distracted writing another story (which turned out to be a lot longer than initially intended, and it'll be posted as soon as it's entirely written..... which will probably take a while, as I'm only in chapter 5/17, and the fic already has ~37k, so.... something to look forward to?)
> 
> I'd like to thank my lovely little smol bean Mads for helping me out with this chapter, I couldn't have finished it without you <3 I was super salty (you might notice) and frustrated while writing this, that's why this chapter is even crackier than the previous ones, please forgive me.
> 
> Anywho, I hope you still like it :) please let me know what you think

A couple of days later, the Impala - now (un)fortunately back to black - rolls off of the highway, and onto the narrow forest road leading toward the “Haunted Motel” Dean is already very keen on entering. The building is only a few minutes outside of town, but for whatever reason about half a mile into the woods, accessible only via a bumpy track that doesn’t really benefit Baby’s suspension.

 

“Who the hell came up with the stupid idea of building a motel  _ here?”  _ Dean complains, wincing when one of Baby’s tires hits a pothole, rattling both the car and the two brothers like children in a washing machine. Dean sighs internally, externally, and most of all, eternally, as he tenderly strokes over his steering wheel, muttering plaintive apologies under his breath.

 

They reach the parking lot, or rather the slightly more flattened area in front of the bedraggled building, and let their eyes roam the shabby house facade that seems to be crumbling away right before them, the abandoned, rusty-looking swing hanging from the tree in the ‘front yard’, the wall of trees surrounding the parcel of land and the road, and a decayed sign that says ‘Welcome to Coal Creek Motel - Enjoy your stay’.  _ Homey. _

 

Today is the eleventh, meaning that they’ve got two and a half days left to find out what exactly they’re even hunting here, why it’s killing people, and how to annihilate it. Easy as pie.

 

“Why is it always Friday the thirteenth, anyway?” Sam asks as he opens the Impala’s trunk to grab his and Dean’s guns and knives - they decided to scan the area first, then the, at this time of the day hopefully empty, building, before they’d interrogate the owners and possible previous victims. “I mean, why not… I don’t know, why not Thursday the 25th or something?”

 

Dean takes the proffered weapons from his brother, shaking his head with a soft huff, “Hell, if I knew.” He tucks the gun into the back of his jeans, the knife into the sheath at his ankle, and locks the car. Checking his flip phone for the time, he also sees his most favorite notification: no service. Awesome. “Okay, Sammy, cell reception is shit out here, so we gotta make sure we’re both back at the car in about-” he checks the time again, because he sometimes has the attention span of a goldfish- “one hour and fifty minutes, before the owners open the motel for the nightly tour. You copy?”

 

“Yes, sir!” Sam scoffs, grinning smugly while he salutes to his brother.

 

______________________________

 

Neither of them found anything on their search around the property. No weird symbols, no dead bodies, no creepy altars, no traces of blood, nothing. Which leaves only the house itself to examine.

 

The brothers accompany a group of seven other people on the tour through the motel. Their guide is a grumpy old man with an unkempt beard, and a generally unkempt outer appearance. But he answers most of the questions some of the overly excited visitors ask him, so he’s at least doing his job.

 

Unfortunately, even though the tour includes the entire building, nothing Dean and Sam didn’t already know is brought to light. Except for maybe the horrifyingly poorly done getup of the whole “Haunted Motel”. Including faux skeletons and cobwebs (although, looking at the overall condition of the house, the latter ones might actually be real), fake blood stains on the walls and floorboards, eerie paintings and soiled mirrors in the most random places, and a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t bring the Winchesters closer to solving the case.

 

They let themselves fall behind the group for a moment to share their thoughts, but none of them noticed anything off, or even slightly suspicious, so they decide to come back in the early morning to sift through the house on their own, without that creepy old dude watching their every step.

 

______________________________

 

“Hey, Dean,” Sam yells from somewhere on the first floor while Dean lets the yellowish beam of his flashlight wander across the walls in the hallway on the second floor. “I think I found something, get your stupid ass down here.”

 

It takes him almost two minutes to find his way back through the maze structured building until he finds Sam standing right in front of the front door, illuminating the ugly rug splayed on the floor. More precisely, the rug is rolled to the side, revealing dark wood planks underneath it. There’s a faint outline of a symbol...or a sigil maybe? drawn in dark gray paint (it probably used to be black, but over the years it must’ve faded) onto the floor, looking like a big ‘T’ with some sort of swirl above the upper horizontal line, and another swirl on the right next to the vertical line. “A tulpa?” Dean asks, squinting into the blinding beam of his brother’s flashlight pointed at his face.

 

“Sure looks like it.” The blinding light lowers toward the floor again.

 

Awesome. Just. Awesome. Tulpa means they can’t kill anything, and have to convince possibly hundreds of people, if not more, that there’s nothing going on here. Easy. As. Pie.

 

Which also means that they can’t do anything at the moment.

 

“Let’s get back to our motel and get some shut-eye. I’m so fucking tired, man,” Dean says and kicks at the rug, causing it to roll unceremoniously back over the painted planks. He opens the door and waits for Sam to walk past him before he follows suit.

 

______________________________

 

After sleeping until late morning - they came back from their self-guided, private motel tour around 4:30 am after all - they spend several hours reading stories about people’s experiences in the “Haunted Motel”.

 

“Holy shit,” Sam curses at his laptop sitting on the desk in front of him, “there’s someone who ran away from about 500 giant tarantulas that were scattered across the entire house.” He taps viciously on the touchpad of his laptop to scroll to the next entry. “And then there was a guy who said he, quote, ‘was torn apart by giant cockroaches with wolf heads’. Damn, that shit sounds terrible.”

 

These stories go on for quite a while, and Dean isn’t so sure if they’re really dealing with a tulpa in this building, or if they’re entirely on the wrong track here. “Isn’t a tulpa like, a bunch of people believing in the same shit?”

 

Sam nods his affirmation. “Yeah, a tulpa is created when many people are concentrating on the same thing while looking at the Tibetan Spirit Sigil we saw on the floor in front of the door. Once created, the tulpa takes on a life of its own and doesn’t need people to believe in it anymore. But Dean, I’m not that sure anymore if it’s really a tulpa going nuts in that motel.”

 

“Yep, just my thought,” Dean says, leaning forward to scrub his hands over his face. “I mean, first off, the sigil is under that ugly ass rug, so people aren’t really likely to see it, right? And every single person is seeing something different? Shouldn’t most people at least see the same thing? That doesn’t make any sense.” Heaving an exasperated sigh, he sinks back into his chair, closing his eyes, trying to sort through the given information.

 

Sam shuts his laptop with a soft click, and sighs almost as loud as Dean did mere seconds ago. “I don’t know, man. But I think you’re right.” He sighs once more, running a hand through his girly hair. “But if it’s not a tulpa, what else could it be? We only have like, one more day to find out what it is and how we can kill it, Dean.”

 

His brother is right. And this year, Friday the 13th only happens twice, so they have to kill whatever it is  _ now, _ or they won’t get another chance for a rather long time.

 

______________________________

 

“No no no  _ no no no no. _ Fuck.  _ No. _ Nope. Nu-uh. Big. Fucking.  _ HELL NO,”  _ Dean repeats over and over again, a little under his, but mostly out of breath, as he’s running down the hallway on the second floor of the motel. Why he’s running? Oh, just the blonde woman in a white nightdress, looking suspiciously similar to his mom, chasing after him while screaming bloody murder.

 

Oh. And she’s on fire. Literally.

 

All of a sudden, she appears right in front of him, causing Dean to come to an abrupt halt, almost face planting into the wall to his right in his attempt to change the direction of his stampede.

 

“Where are you going, Dean?” his not-mother asks in a malicious snarl. “Don’t you love your mommy?”

 

Dean jerks his head around to look for another escape. “Not real,” he mumbles under his breath. “Not real, not real, not real, not real.” 

 

The blonde, burning woman reappears right in front of Dean once again as he tries to make his way downstairs where he suspects his brother. Just that now he watches his mother’s face slowly melting off her bones, revealing charred flesh that starts to turn into a new shape.

 

It’s black and gooey for a few seconds, but little by little, the charred shape merges into a new face.

 

“Dean, why on earth is my car pink? What have you done?!” the slightly contorted replica of his father asks in an accusing tone. What the fuck, John isn’t even dead. This fucking tulpa is obviously on crack. Besides, the car  _ was  _ pink. It’s black again. Thankyouverymuch.

  
  


_ “SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM,” _ Dean shrieks into the hallway.

 

Mary-John-now-flaming-Vampire-Hellhound dissolves into thin air, only to re-materialize behind Dean, growling threateningly at him, and drooling hissing acid on the creaking floorboards. Where the fucking hell is his idiot brother?

 

_ The day before, while Sam was busy doing research on the origin story of the tulpa, Dean was equally busy  _ _ chatting with Nancy the witch via text messages on his flip phone. She may have mutilated his car for a day, but she was also pretty darn hot, and Dean’s never been one to miss out on an opportunity to do some horizontal tango. During all his, what could easily be called, sexting, he pretty much blanked out the Samsquatch and his findings, _ _ so Dean doesn’t actually have any idea what’s really going on in that “Haunted Motel” after all. _

 

_ He vaguely remembers Sam telling him something about Harry Potter fans staying at the motel in 2000, the year after The Prisoner of Azkaban was published, and something about Boggarts. Dean thinks that Sam mentioned the fans “summoning” the Tulpa-Boggart more or less by accident, when they talked about how interesting and frightening the idea of the physical manifestation of one’s worst nightmares would be - while standing right over the giant tulpa sigil in the entrance area. _

 

_ There was also a good reason why it’s always Friday the 13th, maybe it was because one of the fans was thinking about Jason with his ugly hockey mask. But maybe Dean got that wrong. He wasn’t really paying that much attention, to be honest. _

 

_ Sam seemed to know and have a plan, so that was enough for the older Winchester. _

 

_ This plan included an attempt at “exorcising” the Tulpa-Boggart by performing some kind of spiritual cleansing Sam found in one of his books. Or on the internet? Whatever. The important thing is that he did have a plan including the destruction of… something. They’d hoped that by destroying this something, the Boggart would vanish. _

 

_ It did not. _

 

“Dean?”

 

Breathing a relieved sigh at the sight of his brother ascending the stairs from the first floor, Dean takes a step toward him. “Took you long enough, asshat. We really need to get outta here. This thing is driving me ins-  _ WHAT THE HELL?!”  _ His relief quickly fades away into nothingness when his brother’s head, rather unexpectedly, bursts into a thousand pieces, painting the walls around the staircase in blood splatters.

 

Worst fucking nightmare.

 

Dean scrubs viciously at his eyes, trying to scratch the disturbing image from his retinas, while stumbling forward, and rushing down the stairs. Please let Sam be here somewhere. 

 

“Sammy?” Dean tries carefully, peeking around the corner and into the room where he hopes to find his brother. 

 

Two strong hands clasp at the lapels of his jacket and press him against the wall. “Dean? Please tell me it’s you.”

 

“‘Course it’s me, you dipshit,” Dean grunts into his brothers face, squirming slightly in his attempt to free himself from the persistent grip. “Now get your giant Sasquatch hands off of me. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

 

Finally, Sam lets go of Dean’s jacket with a nod, takes a step back from Dean, and briefly skims the room with an unnerved expression. It’s been quite a long time since Dean’s seen his brother that panicked. If it wasn’t for fear of his own life, he actually might find it hilarious.

 

“What does it look like for you?” Dean asks as he leans around another corner to make sure the entrance area is empty, holding his fist up as a sign for Sam to stay behind.

 

He hears a grumbled, defeated sigh before Sam answers, “Clowns. Yours?”

 

“Mom.” This time it’s Dean who exhales a shaky sigh. Only a couple more steps until they reach the front door. “And then Dad lecturing me on defiling his car with the pink velvet shit.”

 

Sam stops next to him, furrowing his brows in a judgemental expression. “Really Dean, that’s your worst nightmare?”   
  
Dean’s eye-roll is basically a full body move. He yanks at the door handle, and says, “Well, now it certainly is.”

 

They step out onto the front porch, down the stairs and toward the Impala where they take a couple of minutes to catch their breath, and process their respective nightmares. Leaning against the side of the car in the middle of the night in front of an eerie building somewhere in the woods is definitely not one of Dean’s favorite things to do.

 

“What the hell are we supposed to do now, huh?” Dean pinches the bridge of his nose for the hundredth time tonight before refocusing on his brother. “I mean, technically, there’s not really much we  _ can  _ do. We can’t  _ kill  _ it. We can’t stop people from coming to this fucking motel. We can’t find these damn Harry Potter fans and make them, I dunno,  _ unthink  _ the Boggart out of existence. We can’t do shit, man.”

 

For once, his smart-alecky brother doesn’t have a witty remark. All he manages to do is a somewhat forlorn shrug, letting his arms go limp by his sides, exhaling wearily.

 

“Okay, then,” Dean says and pushes himself away from the car, swatting his thighs once, “let’s burn that shit down.”

 

“What? No, we can’t do that, Dean!”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Uhm, because it’s wrong? And what if they just rebuild it?”

 

Dean rolls his eyes again. “Then we’ll come back and burn that down, too.”

 

There’s a minute of pregnant silence until Sam speaks again. “You know what? You’re right. Let’s burn it down. The building’s empty now, so at least nobody will get hurt. And it’s not like they’re making a fortune with that shit house anyway.”

 

So they do exactly that. They each take a gas can from the Impala’s trunk, and spread the highly flammable content around and inside the house, soaking the already rotting wood of the first floor and the porch - neither of them dares to go upstairs in fear of another nightmarish encounter, but well, if the first floor burns down, so will the rest of the house, right?

 

While Dean is already back at the car, getting it ready to head off by driving it toward the narrow path leading back to the highway, Sam spreads a trail of gasoline from the front door of the motel down the stairs of the porch and several yards away from the building, until he’s next to the car.

 

“Would you do the honors?” Sam asks his brother, holding out his favorite Zippo with a knowing smirk. As much as the two of them enjoy solving cases, actually killing the monsters they’re hunting, and leaving haunted places...not haunted anymore - it’s also fucking amazing to destroy things. Besides, watching a house burn down does have something oddly meditative.

 

And the truth is, not everything can be saved.


End file.
